General – Page 5 – The Dice Pool

Investigations

The detective dichotomy

We have been enjoying the Blade Runner RPG immensely in the last few weeks. The blade runners are into the second day of their investigation of the murder of Sandor, another member of the LAPD Rep Detect Unit who happened to be a Nexus 9 replicant. So far, it has gone pretty well for them. They have had some incredible luck with dice rolls that even revealed certain clues I was surprised about. Due to uncovering these, I think they are coming up with the basis of a solid theory for what happened.

Here’s the thing: this is an official case file, produced by Free League. I would imagine most people playing Blade Runner have run this scenario; it comes in the starter set. And the details of the scenario, the NPCs, the locations, even the events, to a certain extent, are set. There is a lot of freedom for the PCs to pursue leads when and how they want but the perpetrator/s, their reasons and motivations and the major players in the case are the same for every table.

Now don’t get me wrong, we are really enjoying this format. The setting and the themes and the ways the scenario intersects with them are very well done. But it is hard not to feel like it’s on rails, right? The answers will always be the same although each group might do something different with them.

Of course, maybe that’s true of any prewritten scenario, no matter the genre. There is always a lich at the end of Tomb of Horrors. Strahd is the big bad in Ravenloft. That kind of thing goes without saying. So, what is it about the mystery that makes this seem less free-form? I guess it’s that finding the answers is the whole point. In Ravenloft, the point for the players is probably the fun of exploring Barovia and the castle. They are enjoying the scares and the combat and all of that.

But in the end maybe it doesn’t matter. Of course, my players don’t know the ins and outs of the clues or the perps or the mystery until they find them. So it’s still mysterious to them.

Building with Brindlewood

Of course, there are other ways to do mystery games. The one that comes to mind is Brindlewood Bay by Jason Cordova, of course, and the games that have been Carved from Brindlewood, like Public Access and others. In these games, there are plenty of pre-written and published mysteries but, significantly, they don’t have solutions.

In an inventive and fascinating twist of game design, Brindlewood Bay’s solutions emerge during play. There are elements of investigation, role playing, narrative building and straight up dice rolling that result in your characters either coming up with the right answer or the wrong answer. Or, you have the familiar PBTA option of a correct answer but with some complication on a middling roll of the dice.

I have not yet had the chance to play one of these games but I would love to. I want to see if it is more satisfying than the sort of game where your solution is written in stone.

Have you played any mystery games that made you excited to play them again? Send me some recommendations!

Forged in the Dungeon, Part 2

Engage!

This is an update on how my last session of Spelljammer went. More specifically how it went when implementing some mechanics I nicked, unapologetically from Blades in the Dark. If you don’t know what I’m updating you about, oh valued and discerning reader, go take a look at this post right here.

It was touch-and-go last night, to be honest. We only had about 2 hours to play and we were on course for the session to fully be a shopping episode. But, in the last 45 minutes or so, we managed to get into the new technique of using information gathering rolls and an engagement roll before interacting with the dungeon.

I think it worked pretty well, once we got into it. I briefly explained the concept and everyone was on board with it. So we went ahead and they started making up the ways they would use their specialties to help boost their chances with the engagement roll. One character described a trip to the pub to try and identify some locals who might know the way to this secret hideout they were looking for, one followed a potential gang member to the entrance, one questioned some dock workers they were helping out, one went to ask her sister for help and one staked out the most likely spots along the docks. They all used different skills and only one of them failed the information gathering roll. I set the Information gathering DC pretty low for this first time, a mere DC 10. I gave them +2 to the engagement roll for each success so they ended up with a +8 for a total of 18 on the engagement roll.

Now, I had prepared three maps on Roll20 and a bunch of potential encounters, both combat and social, traps and dangerous environments. I did not regret dumping two of those locations in favour of jumping straight to the dungeon entrance. Did the old dump and jump, as it were.

I narrated their discovery of and arrival at the building that hid the staircase to the hideout. I explained how the intelligence they had gotten in their information gathering phase had allowed them to figure out the best time to enter. I described the way they were warned to avoid dangers and possible traps on the stairs and then, satisfyingly, they got to the front door. And that’s where the action started.

Straight Dunjin’

I asked for some feedback on the technique at the end of the session and it was broadly positive. There was a definite consensus that, if we had simply role-played each of the scenes I described above with multiple rolls in each scene for stealth, deception, persuasion, etc, it would have taken hours and they would not have gotten anywhere near the entrance to the dungeon last night.

One player, Thomas, told me today that, because there tends to be a lot of “admin” in this campaign (ship stuff, money stuff, shopping stuff etc.) that it was refreshing to get to the action without a lot of rigmarole. I agreed that it felt good to use the precious time we have together (only 2 hours every fortnight) in as fun a way as possible. Last night, that involved sending them to an underground lair where they discovered a guy with the top of his head sawn off and a bunch of identical hobgoblins with gossamer threads attached to their necks. You know, good old fashioned fun!

We also talked about how they were able to retain a sense of having achieved this “easier” path to the entrance of Ozamata’s hideout. Since we went around the “table” and every character had input to how they wanted to help gather information and got to narrate and role-play within those short scenes, it felt earned more than given.

On the more measured side, I did get some feedback from Trevor that, although it worked well in that particular situation, it might be more difficult to apply in others. I have to agree with that assessment too. It is easy to apply this method when the PCs are aware of the exact job they have to do, when they have time to seek out information about it and to prepare in lots of different ways. It is not going to work so well when an encounter is meant to take them by surprise. Maybe that’s ok though. It’s not Blades in the Dark that we’re playing and it never will be. D&D isn’t supposed to feel like that. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t try to make it feel less like a grind and more narratively satisfying whenever possible.

I’m very well aware that, for most gamers who are used to the story-game play style, all I’m describing is maybe some half-arsed version of their regular RPG experience. Maybe it’s not even that. But I will say that, for me, it is fixing a distinct issue in a campaign that I very much want to continue playing but definitely want to speed up bit. I mean they have been playing the last day and a half on the Rock of Bral since last November… so, I want to move things along without making my players feel like I’m rushing them or demanding they do something they don’t want to. Hopefully, this technique will help to accomplish that.

Has anyone else tried something like this with any degree of success in D&D?

AD&D 2nd Edition

Masochism?

I have a hankering, beloved reader. I crave a little old school. Not revived or anything. No renaissance here. I’m talking, the original (at least for me.) I have been thinking about running an honest to goodness AD&D 2E campaign. That’s the system I cut my teeth on as a DM and I have a lot of the old books lying about on shelves, rarely picked up for any reason other than curiosity. I have a trio of my favourite settings from the old days, Planescape, Ravenloft and Dark Sun. But, is having them a good enough reason to want to run them? The rule set in 2E still involved THAC0, for crying out loud. Only certain races and certain alignments could play certain classes. Every rule seems over the top and over-worked when you look at them. So why? Why would I want to run it?

Nostalgia?

I ran the most successful campaign of my teenaged years in Dark Sun. I loved the setting. It was gritty and made life very difficult for your player characters. They had to start at 3rd level because a first level character wasn’t going to survive in the deserts of Athas too long. You were encouraged to create a “stable” of 5 characters and switch between them to level them all up, just because it was quite lethal. Most mages actively destroyed the land by casting spells and the Halflings were cannibals. It was fucking hardcore and we loved it. So, when I think about running AD&D again, I think I’m channeling the feelings from that time.

But I will admit there is also a sort of morbid curiosity to try it out. More as a historical research project than anything else. How would it compare to more modern systems like 5E or the Year Zero engine or even actual OSR systems?
And I think at least one of my players shares this sense of curiosity about this game and the legacy it spawned. He didn’t get to experience it so maybe it’s just his curiosity too. I mean, people really did love it, right? So, why?

Dark Sun

There is also another point, though. It might even be the main reason I want to do it. Dark Sun itself. WOTC have indicated in the past that they are never likely to revive Dark Sun as a setting for D&D. It just has too many slightly problematic elements. There is a lot about slavery in it. There’s a very strong theme of climate disaster and despotism and evil capitalists. I think it is generally safe to say that Wizards is not interested in picking up any political hot potatoes these days. They will keep it light and breezy whenever possible. So Dark Sun is never likely to come back. Now, I know that enterprising individuals have made some impressive 5E conversions of the setting and I have explored that option. But they don’t give me what the original did. I think Dark Sun benefits from the cruel and crunchy 2E system as much as it does from the grittiness of its world building. And I think that is the main reason I want to run it again.

Anyone out there running any old versions of D&D? If so, why?

Forged in the Dungeon

Engage

I mentioned in my post about my ongoing Spelljammer D&D 5E campaign that I get frustrated by the vast swathes of time demanded by the system, particularly for combat. It’s so involved and requires the application of so many sub-systems, the knowledge of so many specific abilities such as spells and feats that even a small scale fight can take up the guts of an average session. Player patience is tested during the parts they are not involved in and when it does come to their turn it can be difficult for them to know the current state of play because they have, quite understandably, tuned out. So then you have to rehash the last few turns before they take their go.

Some have suggested ways around this, such as removing the roll to hit or limiting the time a player can take on their turn. I understand the impetus to use these workarounds. But one option feels too much like it’s removing a core element of the gameplay and the other is going to end up with some players rushing and resentful and others just giving up on doing anything cool and instead just hitting the thing with their sword every time.
So, what’s the answer? Sorry, good reader, I don’t claim to have one. But here’s what I am going to try:

Blades in the Dark has a mechanic that allows the crew to make a single roll before they get into the action. This is known as the engagement roll and the level of success you achieve with this roll essentially determines how far into a score the action starts. So, in a D&D context, if you roll poorly, you might have to begin the dungeon before you even find the entrance: you’re wandering the wilderness, risking random encounters and suffering exhaustion in the freezing cold while you search, relentlessly for the right damn tree stump that the tunnel is hidden under. But if you roll well? Well, then you come prepared; you knew the weather was going to turn nasty so you dressed for it, you knew it was going to be a long way so you hired some dog sleds, you bought a map from a local trapper and you read a book about the dungeon that told you how to bypass the traps in the entrance hall. In the second case, you start your delve right in the meat of the dungeon, ready to face the fun puzzles and fights and escape with all the coin you can eat as a reward.
Each option sounds like it could be fun to play, to be honest, but option 2 gets the PCs closer to the goal with the least amount of danger, thereby saving time and, moving them towards that tasty dungeon meat I was talking about earlier.

Information is power

Now, another element of this mechanic is that, in Blades in the Dark, to add or remove dice to or from your engagement roll pool, you would take into account many in-world mechanical elements that simply do not apply to my D&D space-galleon game. But there is another mechanic from Blades that I think could work instead. Players could each make a “gather information” roll before the engagement roll. They could use any skill they like for this; arcana, history, religion, stealth, anything that makes sense in the fiction. And they could also use their spells and abilities to improve their chances with their chosen rolls. Success on these rolls could improve their chances of scoring high in the engagement roll.

Normally, in Blades in the Dark, successful information gathering attempts will inform the type of plan the crew comes up with, thereby potentially adding extra dice to the engagement roll pool. In D&D, I am considering my options, advantage or bonuses. Advantage is my preferred way of rewarding players for clever or ingenuous play, but if I offer a +1 or +2 bonus to the engagement roll for each successful gather information roll it means they can stack. I mean, I suppose I could just chuck out the PHB altogether and allow them to have multiple d20s for the engagement roll but, as I mentioned previously, I am not trying to mess with the core rules of the game, just add a little spice to them.

Hot dam

Now, this method could work really well in an instance like I described above where they plan to visit a dungeon and a lot of information and luck could help them to get there quickly and painlessly. But, if all I have planned is a big encounter that doesn’t really involve a lot of build-up or mystery or travel to get to it, I am not sure it helps at all. The problem with D&D combat is still present.

One method I have considered is increasing the damage output of an encounter while decreasing the enemies’ hit points. This would keep the essential rules of the system in play and the sense of danger and high stakes, without the fantastic outlay of time.

So, I am not finished with this idea by any means. If I get a chance, I am going to test out the engagement roll and gather information roll tomorrow night when we return to the Rock of Bral. But I suspect I will need to tweak it and workshop it before it works as well as I want it to.

Does anyone else do this sort of thing? Does anyone have any good ideas for speeding up D&D combat? Should I really try?

The GM Jukebox

Murder on the dance-floor

So, in Spire, we played using the Kings of Silver campaign frame. This introduced a whole set of complications not often part of the average role playing group’s set of problems. They were given the keys and managerial responsibility for The Manticore, a casino and entertainment venue in the city’s Silver Quarter. Imagine Las Vegas but with more elves and feuding nobles.

Unsurprisingly, the players took it and ran with it, often leaving the main plot somewhat neglected as a result. As luck would have it, one of them played an Idol, a sort of magical enchantress/pop star with the ability to start a party anytime, anywhere. So that got the crowds in. They started off by opening a night club with dripping red meat hanging from hooks in the ceiling and a death metal band playing. They called it the Hardicore. In a totally unhinged and tactically questionable turn of events, the PCs decided to murder a group of nobles, the Quinns, who were working for their rival, Mr. So. They did this in the middle of their very busy nightclub, on opening night. Now that’s what I call Hardicore. Anyway, one of the cool things about that scene was that I handed over control of the Bluetooth speaker to one of the players at our table. The Hardicore was Isaac’s brainchild, really, so it only felt appropriate that he should control the music choices, for that scene. He made choices I never would have and made it more personal to the players.

Later, when the Hardicore underwent a full renovation and reboot as the far more disco Mantiskate or Glamcore. I can’t remember which one they went with in the end to be honest. They replaced the meat hooks with glitter balls and the death metal and Desang (a type of violent opera popular in Spire) with disco and roller skating. This time, I handed over the control to Thomas and Heather to allow them to choose the disco tracks they wanted to use as a backdrop for the Idol to ensorcel the heads of the noble families into working together. I did take back the reins later so I could blast Kung-fu Fighting when the inevitable battle broke out, though.

Moments like these truly exemplify the value of having music at the table when you play RPGs. And I also think it should not always be in the control exclusively of the GM, if you have one.

Mood music

Of course, when we use music, it’s normal to use it to establish an atmosphere. There are few tools at our disposal more immediately effective than music, I often think.

I mentioned previously that I used a playlist of the Blade Runner soundtrack while playing that game on Roll20. The atmospheric work you can do at a table is exponentially more difficult when all your players are sitting in potentially brightly lit rooms filled with distractions, in my opinion. But I felt that the use of the music in the Roll20 jukebox drew us all into the same moments. Conveniently, the soundtrack included tracks meant precisely for several of the locations shared by both the movie and that Case File, so, if you know the movie, it can really transport you to the place. Even if you don’t know the movie, of course, I think that incredible score by Vangelis will establish the right mood for the game, a sort of retro-future noir.

But movie soundtracks have a problem, if you want to use them for atmosphere in your game. In general, you can’t simply play them through because the tracks are designed with specific scenes in mind. In all likelihood the scene you’re playing at the table isn’t going to correspond to the music all the time. While playing the music for Blade Runner, I found myself hopping from one track to another almost constantly, and, honestly, it’s a lot of work when, as a GM, I already have a lot on my plate.

Lists 3.1: playlists

The answer, of course, is to make playlists for certain types of scenes. Here’s a list of the types of scenes I am thinking of:

Battle
Chase
Dungeon
Downtime
Montage
Mystery
Travel
Wonder

In the last week or so, while I have been writing these blogposts, I have also been listening to albums and soundtracks on Apple Music. This allows me to stop writing and pick out a particular track that I feel suits one of these playlists, when it comes up. In the past, I have tried to make playlists like these by just thinking about particular songs that I think fit the genre of the game without paying any mind to the types of scenes and the different music you want for them. This never worked satisfactorily. I am finding this new method much more successful.

Thanks to the influence of Jason Cordova and the Companion Adventures section at the end of every episode of the Fear of a Black Dragon podcast many of the songs in the playlists are from synth-wave and dungeon-synth albums. Mostly, I have discovered that you can find tracks from these genres to suit almost any of the above. I have added a few tracks from video game soundtracks too but each has been hand-picked for a given playlist.

I’m sure I’ll also realise I need to build playlists for more scene types as I continue using this method. But, I’m quite enjoying it as an exercise and I think it proved very useful in last night’s session of Heart, in which I got use Wonder, Downtime, Battle and Dungeon.

Do you use music at your table? If so, what kinds and how do you use it? And if you are one of my players, what did you think of my new playlists?

What I’m playing, July 2024

Lists

The internet loves a list. A top ten, preferably. I don’t have a top ten today. Sorry to disappoint you, dear reader.
Instead, here I have gathered an unranked list of the six RPGs I am currently involved in. I’m running half of these and I’m a player in the other half, so it’s organised that way only.

This list does not represent the full catalogue of games I have been involved with so far this year. That will come in a separate post or series of posts in the near future. I guess this might seem like a lot of ongoing games to some. On the other hand, I’m quite sure it doesn’t seem like all that many to others. I usually fit in the odd one-shot into the schedule too, but other than that, this works well for me, especially as they are all fortnightly, pretty much.

I play two of these games in my house with my wife and friends, I play one with some members of our fledgling local RPG community, Tables and Tales. We play that in another friend’s house. Two more are online with friends and the last is played online with members of the international RPG community, The Open Hearth.

There’s no doubt that the ability to play online has opened a world of possibilities that, up until the start of the pandemic, I had not really even considered. It’s not the same as meeting around a table with snacks and drinks and banter. You can’t have cross-talk on Zoom. The chaos that is allowed to reign over the table in home games at times is to be treasured, in my opinion, and you really can’t recreate that on a video call. But when your mate you want to play with lives hundreds of miles away or when the only people you can get to play the little-known, esoteric story game you want to experience are located all across the world it’s definitely a boon.

Anyway, for now, I’m going to write a post on each of the games I’m running since I have more to write about each of those. I’ll do a single post for the games in which I am a player.

The Dice Pool

Taking the initiative

Do you consume a lot? I feel like I do. Food, beverages, books, videos, films, music, podcasts, games, opinions, facts, feelings, content, content, content. I get a little bloated, to be honest, physically and mentally.

So this is one outlet for my mental bloat. I think I’ll write how I feel about some of the things I consume as a way to digest them (not the food and drink, I’ll do that in the traditional way.) But, mostly, I’ll be writing about my main creative outlet, playing, running and making things for tabletop role playing games. Let’s not be coy about this; the internet is not lacking for nerds going on about their games, or someone else’s games or games they watched other people play or games they hate or games they actually quite like, surprisingly enough. So, even knowing this, why would I have the gall to add to it? Good question, good question indeed. Maybe I will figure that out as I do it. The adventure is the journey and all that.

History check

So, I started playing RPGs back in the eighties, when I was a kid. What an amazing outlet for my imagination and a way to share it with my friends. I remember the feeling of playing games like AD&D, Twilight 2000, MERP, every single Palladium game. What feelings? Well, there’s a fair bit of dissatisfacion, frustration, and boredom if I’m honest. But, crucially, all of that is tempered by moments of sheer elation, joy, sorrow and anger. I don’t remember that much about the games themselves now, other than that there were a lot of numbers and arguments about numbers.

A few years ago I started to get back into RPGs (I know TTRPG is the more standard term these days but it is rather unwieldy and I can promise you that there will be few occasions for confusion on this blog) again, partly because my wife was curious about trying it out and partly for the sake of nostalgia. Anyway, as I got back into the hobby and started playing with adults, I discovered a whole new world of games the likes of which the tween me could never have conceived.

Treasure

RPGs have changed since I was a kid, and I don’t mean the edition numbers, or the abandonment of THAC0. I’m not sure when or how it occurred, but at some point, someone very clever and observant realised that you don’t HAVE to wade through a morass of stats and modifiers and encumbrance and spell descriptions to get to the real meat of the story you and your friends want to tell. You can if you want, that’s its own sort of fun, but if your aim is to just have a laugh, or to tell a particular story or to make your players cry, there are games and systems out there to allow you to do that. You don’t want to solve problems with violence? Cool, try out Wanderhome. You want to solve problems with ultra-violence? Give Eat the Reich a go. You want to investigate mysteries with a creepy-weird feel, pick up Public Access. You just want to tell an emergent story with your friends, you have so many options, give Blades in the Dark a try, or Heart, or Wildsea, or Mountainhome. Look, this is still relatively new to me. I’m still trying to figure out what’s OSR and what’s just trad. I am still mostly mystified by GMless games and a little intimidated by story games.

I’m learning a lot all the time so, this is where I’ll be writing about that. Other stuff too, no doubt, but mostly the games I play and the stuff I learn from them.